Public Financing, George Bush and Barack Obama: Why the Publicly Funded Campaign Does Not Work, and What We Can Do to Fix It

After the Supreme Court upheld the Federal Election Campaign Act in Buckley v. Valeo, the modern system for campaign finance was born; since the 1980 election, most presidential candidates have accepted some form of public financing. While the current campaign finance system is a major upgrade over the previous system whereby campaigns were funded by a small group of wealthy donors, there are still two major problems. First, the current system discourages the participation of the majority of voters in the political process. Second, the current laws do not reduce the cost of running for President. With these issues in mind, the author briefly proposes a solution that will continue the improvements brought on by the FECA and update the system for the 21st century, using the 2008 Presidential election between Senator Barack Obama and Senator John McCain as a model